Just a quick post to say Happy Easter to my Christian readers (and anyone who loves Easter candy).

The Monday after Easter marks the slow close of Candy Season until stuff starts appearing on the shelves for Halloween.

I hope you find some good deals! Here’s a mini-review of this Hershey’s Hoppy Egg Filler hollow rabbit.

This tall treat is from Hershey’s and made in the US. (The giant Hershey’s Kisses are now made in Mexico.)

The box makes him look formidable at 18 inches high. But the actual bunny inside is only 13 inches tall. I took his photo yesterday and ate his ear this morning for breakfast.

As far as solidness goes, he is technically hollow, but the shell is quite thick. This rabbit is 20 ounces, so there’s a lot of chocolate there. I had to take two bites of his ear ... and still didn’t hit air. (Instead I ended up poking him with a knife to find out how far the ear mass went.)

The chocolate was mediocre. It’s sweet, a bit grainy. It has only a hint of the distinctive Hershey’s tangy bite to it. I’m wondering if part of it is that he’s not really “sealed” in that box. He’s surrounded by an absurd amount of packaging, but none of it is airtight and the box is just closed with a little piece of tape. For $20 or so, which is what this guy is supposed to retail for, I think I want smaller but better.

I have to say that he was impressive looking and I’m sure any child will be thrilled to find one today ... or even on Tuesday.

What was your Easter breakfast?

Related Candies

1. Riegelein Confiserie Hollow Chocolate
2. Lake Champlain & See’s Bunny Battle
3. Upscale Hollow Chocolate: Michel Cluizel & Hotel Chocolat
4. Palmer Hollow Chocolate Flavored Bunny
5. Russell Stover Hollow Milk Chocolate Bunny

It’s not often that I’ll stop my fast forward through commercials to watch something. I definitely did when I saw the Reese’s: Perfectly Easter advertisement.

I’m not only a huge critic of candy (because I love it so), I’m also rather fond of breaking down advertising, but I’ll save that for another time.

The important takeaway I got on that advert was that Spring is in the Air and Reese’s Eggs are a chocolate covered peanut butter product.

Candy Blog reader, Peloria, has been wonderfully helpful in helping me track down these two versions by leaving comments on my original review of the perfect Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs (2006 version). I got a hold of eggs for 2009 from three stores with two different wrappers. For the most part single Reese’s Eggs are sold with the package that doesn’t say that they’re milk chocolate. But I also found the six pack that says Milk Chocolate above the Reese’s logo.

Whether they say Milk Chocolate or not, the ingredients are the same. So I did a little digging.

The classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg ingredients were (2005 source):
Milk Chocolate, Peanuts, Sugar, Dextrose, Salt, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Corn Syrup, Cornstarch, Glycerin & TBHQ.

The current 2009 ingredients:
Peanuts, Milk Chocolate, Sugar, Dextrose, Vegetable Oil, Chocolate, Nonfat milk, Salt, Whey, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Corn Syrup, Milk fat, Corn Starch, Soy Lecithin, Glycerin, TBHQ, Vanillin.

For reference, the standard Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ingredients are (in 2009):
Milk Chocolate, Peanuts, Sugar, Dextrose, Salt & TBHQ.

There are a few changes there, but nothing that definitively says that these aren’t a real chocolate product any longer. But they’re different enough to change the nutritional profile. There’s more salt (they’ve gone from 140mg to 150mg), and 11 grams of fat now instead of 10.

So I tasted them (after all, at this point I had 9 of them). The chocolate coating looked a bit chalky, not glossy (and some looked a little swirly and uneven in color). They’re soft and the peanut butter overwhelms any chocolate flavor anyway. The peanut butter center is crumbly and nutty, not completely smooth but not crunchy, just a little more rustic than the stuff in a jar. Salty, sweet and satisfying. The chocolate coating feels cool on the tongue and seems to melt pretty well, but it also melts in my fingers pretty quickly too. It’s a good time these come along in the spring because they’d never make it in a Los Angeles summer.

I’m not sure why Hershey’s has removed the Milk Chocolate part from some wrappers, I fear it’s because they’re planning something for next year ... kind of easing us into crappy candy instead of a sharp shift that causes an uproar like the true & mockolate Kissables being on the shelves at the same time. I still consider them a winner. The prices appear to have gone up. I got the six pack for $2 on sale, but buying the individual ones, the best sale I could find was 75 cents each.

Hershey’s has a bunch of other candies for Easter in the Reese’s line, too. There are Fudge Covered Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs and Reester Bunnies, which are just a molded version of the RPBC in various sizes. They’re more chocolate than peanut butter. Then there are the Foil Eggs, the Reese’s Pieces Eggs (in beautiful pastels),

Then there’s this strange monstrosity which is also called Milk Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg but unlike the 1.2 ounce version, this one is molded. It’s also 6 ounces (so five times as big but twice the price per ounce).

The box is ridiculously oversized for the product - it’s 6.5 inches long. The egg itself is 4.5 inches long, 1.5 inches high and 3 inches wide at the broadest part. That means one inch of space on all sides ... feels like more than just protection, feels like a bit of fakery. (Though it’s easy to see the entirety of the product through the cellophane window.)

The ingredients are pretty much the same as the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup - erring on the chocolate as the first ingredient, not peanuts.

I get the sense that these are supposed to be like those deluxe slicing candy eggs that have always puzzled me. Candy, in my opinion, doesn’t need any serving implements. It’s meant to be eaten with the fingers and needs no preparation or tools. Either I bite into this one and eat it all by myself, of I slice it up. Which I did.

Looking at the slices there, I think you can tell that this is not the same center as the 1.2 ounce egg ... it looks and feels a bit oilier (which is not a bad thing, just a different thing).

The interesting experience with these slices is that the amount of chocolate shell varies so much depending on where the slice comes from. The ends, of course, are mostly chocolate. But even in a center slice, the chocolate shell is especially thick, much thicker than any cup I’ve ever had from Reese’s, as thick as a regular Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar.

The chocolate flavor was completely lost on this product, it tasted like peanut butter fudge, though it was pretty smooth and sweet with a slight milky flavor to it. The peanut butter center was stellar. It was relatively solid, had the crumbly texture and didn’t taste as sweet as the regular eggs. I liked the clear distinction between the chocolate shell here and the peanut butter filling, instead of the unclear margins in the smaller egg. But sometimes the chocolate had a coconut flavor to it that I can’t quite explain nor say that I cared much for.

However, the silly over-packaging and price tag would certainly keep me from buying these ever again. But if you’re looking for something for a peanut butter obsessed person’s Easter basket instead of a pile of the small eggs or the standby bunny, it might be fun. Portion control was a lot easier than I thought, I sliced up rather logically into five pieces, though I can’t be sure that they were actually the same weight. The package says that it serves four (which means each serving is more than a single regular egg).

I feel like downgrading the 1.2 ounce Reese’s Eggs to a 9 out of 10, but maybe that’s an emotional response, a response out of fear, not one based on my actual tasting (though there was some throat burning from the sweetness I don’t remember from the past). As for the giganto one, it’s not something I appreciate, though I guess it’s okay. I give it a 7 out of 10.

UPDATE 3/30/2009: Thanks to Peloria’s continued documentation, I kept looking for these other non-milk chocolate labeled eggs. I finally found them at the 99 Cent Only Store near my house. The packages were 2 for a dollar.

Sure enough the ingredients indicated that they’re really not chocolate (I know, the photo looks like all the other photos, but trust me, this is what the reverse says):

Peanuts, sugar, dextrose, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), chocolate, nonfat milk, contains 2% or less of milk fat, lactose, salt, whey, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, corn syrup, soy lecithin, cornstarch, glycerin, TGHQ & PGPR, vanillin.

They look a little flatter than the milk chocolate eggs (labeled or not). As for the taste, well, this one seemed really salty to me, but maybe that’s what happens when I have peanut butter eggs for breakfast. (Hey, eggs are a breakfast food!)

The mockolate coating wasn’t bad, it wasn’t any worse looking than the current eggs. It has a similar melt and cool feeling on the tongue, it’s sweet but I didn’t taste any milky component to it.

I still don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why they’ve have both on the market at the same time, why they’d make two versions and ruin something that was perfectly good and perfect. As for the ruining part, well, they’re not that bad but I’m not fond of eating palm oil when I could be eating cocoa butter.

Related Candies

1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Bar
2. ReeseSticks (Revisit)
3. Hershey’s Miniatures
4. Short & Sweet: Post Easter Tidbits
5. M&M and Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Eggs
6. Dove Truffle and Snickers Eggs
7. Hershey Eggs

This is the third time I’ve bought the Limited Edition Milk Chocolate Reese’s Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups.

I faithfully photographed the first package, but then ate them.

The second one, well, that was a King Sized version that I didn’t photograph, but then ate and realized that the proportions were different.

Then yesterday I was browsing my local 99 Cent Stores (yes, two of them, as they are less than a block apart and carry different stuff), I saw boxes and boxes of these. Since the expiration says 9K (November 2009), I figured they were well worth the 39 cents just so I could get these off my chest.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups made with crunchy peanut butter are not new. I remember them from the 90s and found this wrapper on Brad Kent’s site. Apparently they were also available in Canada, according to this wrapper on Mike’s Candy Bar Wrappers. This version is not to be confused with the Limited Edition Reese’s Big Cup with Nuts, which had whole nuts, not crushed ones.

They look, pretty much, like regular Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Fresh and nutty smelling, the tops were pristine on my most recent purchase (no oily puddles).

The chocolate is sweet and cool on the tongue, the peanut butter is immediately salty. The texture is the same as the regular cups except there are some big chunks of peanuts mixed in.

Most peanut butters are offered as either smooth or chunky, so it’s a natural evolution that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups would come that way as well.

I liked these, I think they should be a regular item, but at the moment, if you have a 99 Cent Only Store the price is pretty darn good for fresh product. When those are gone, we can just wait for yet another limited edition or seasonal introduction. (I am kind of curious to try this crunchy style with the Easter favorite, the Egg.)

Other more timely reviews: Gigi Reviews, Candy Addict, Hanna Aronovich, The Chocolate Traveler and ZOMG Candy.

Side note: I saw a oodles of the now hard-to-find Reese’s Bars at the Fairfax & 6th 99 Cent Store.

Related Candies

1. ReeseSticks (Revisit)
2. Whoppers Reese’s Peanut Butter Flavored Candy
3. Reese’s Select Clusters
4. Reese’s Pieces
5. Elvis Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Cup
6. Factory Fresh Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
7. M&M and Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Eggs
8. Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar

Hershey’s introduced their Signatures line last year, which is an upscale set of offerings within the traditional Hershey’s fare that’s available at grocers, drug stores and discount retailers. (The Reese’s Clusters were the first item in this line that I found.)

Hershey’s Bliss is also part of this Signatures line. The initial launch of Bliss included milk chocolate, dark chocolate and a milk chocolate meltaway.

As the winter holidays approached, the Hershey’s Bliss Creme de Menthe Meltaway Center appeared on shelves. I first spotted them at Hershey’s Chocolate World back in October, but they smelled so overwhelmingly minty without even opening the bag, I was afraid that the airline would think I was a drug mule trying to cover the scent of something illegal from the famous contraband-sniffing-Beagles of LAX.

So I waited for them to show up locally and sure enough Target has them in stock (on sale, though I’d hardly call $3.50 for an 8.8 ounce bag of Hershey’s a great deal).

Last year Hershey’s released a limited edition Hershey’s Kiss in Mint Truffle (and they’re back this year).

The exterior packaging is pretty, it screams mint & casual indulgence. The interior foil wrappers are not so nice. I was not keen on the shift from the elegant bronzy tones on the outside to the screaming goldenrod text with the green foil.

Inside the pieces were a little soft, a little greasy looking. But beyond that ... they were quite dreamy.

The chocolate is smooth and creamy and the center is just slightly fudgier with nice mint flavor that had both peppermint and spearmint notes (the spearmint part was a refreshing change). It was also a little salty, just like the Mint Truffle Kisses, but the chocolate was silkier.

I really didn’t think I’d like these, but they’re a very successful little morsel. Everyone at the office seems to agree, as the bag is now empty and folks have asked if there are any left.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s White Chocolate Meltaway Bliss
2. Trader Joe’s Peppermint Bark White Chocolate Bar
3. Jo’s Peppermint Crunch
4. Andes Mints & Dessert Indulgence
5. Dove Promises (Caramel & Almonds)
6. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane
7. Inside Out Junior Mints
8. London Mint is really from Ohio

The Hershey’s & Starbucks marriage has moved quietly out of the honeymoon stage. I see the products around quite a bit, though I haven’t been tempted to buy any again since I tried their launch line of items.

Then I saw their new holiday truffles. They have three new variesties that I spotted at both Rite Aid and Target.

The new truffles are: Peppermint Mocha Truffles, Gingerbread Latte Truffles and Eggnog Latte Flavored Truffles.

I stared and stared at the two packages for Gingerbread and Eggnog and I couldn’t figure out the difference. Gingerbread was going to be a little more on the cinnamon side and eggnog was going to be more on the nutmeg side. Both are milk chocolate.

Even though they were on sale, I opted for just the Eggnog ones. I think nutmeg is a hugely underrated spice and I love the combination of milk chocolate and nutmeg. (Frances bought all of them though.)

First let me say that I’ve never had a Starbucks coffee drink before. I’ve had straight lattes and cappuccinos and tried their Chantico hot chocolate before, but I’ve never had any of their flavored drinks. Like my aversion to sodas, I just don’t care much for sweet drinks. So I can’t compare the experience of this truffle to one of their actual hot Eggnog Lattes.

The narrow domed pieces are very attractive. Nicely molded and aromatic. I got an immediate whiff of chocolate and nutmeg with a little hint of rum flavoring.

The chocolate shell is shiny and nicely tempered. The chocolate is sweet but has a slight pop of coffee flavors. The sugar, cream and palm oil ganache center is creamy with a few little bits of spice in it. There’s a very slight hint of coffee from time to time, but for the most part this is a chocolate piece about the egg nog flavors, not espresso.

Overall, as I’ve found with egg nog in the past, this is pretty sweet stuff. The piece is nice, but as I’ve noticed with the other truffle boxes, I kind of want a variety. I did see a gift box at Target that had a mix of Mocha, Peppermint Mocha and Gingerbread Latte Truffles, but at $10 for less than 6 ounces it was a worse deal ounce for ounce than the stand up boxes. So I think I’m just going to keep my eye on it and hope it’s still there after Christmas. Or go to a real chocolatier and get something that’ll really roll my eyes back in my head.

As drug store chocolates go, they are all natural and Starbucks makes a point of saying that their coffee and chocolate are sourced ethically and grown sustainably (doesn’t say anything about the palm oil though). They’re certainly better than most other mass-produced boxed chocolates in that respect. Kosher.

Related Candies

1. Choceur Coffee & Cream
2. Starbucks Truffles
3. Starbucks Chocolate
4. Trader Joe’s Fair Trade Chocolate Truffles
5. Dove Jewels
6. Chuao ChocoPods
7. Pocket Coffee

I picked up this Rally Bar at Hershey’s Chocolate World last month. The only place I know these are being sold is at the Hershey’s stores, as a few other candy bloggers have mentioned. (Hershey’s Insider, Jim’s Chocolate Mission & Sugar Hog.)

The Rally Bar was one of the few candy bars introduced by the Hershey’s company under its own brand name during the 70s. Sure, Hershey’s has plenty of chocolate bars with inclusions and they also have other candy bars like Almond Joy and Fifth Avenue but those were made by other companies that were later purchased by the Hershey’s corporation.

The Rally Bar wasn’t much of an innovation. It’s a nougat center with a coating of caramel, rolled in peanuts and then covered in a chocolatey coating.

I remember them existing when I was a kid, but I also recall them having a yellow, orange and red wrapper, not this generic white wrapper. The Rally isn’t quite extinct either, it’s found in some small enclaves around the world.

I was intrigued by the idea that Hershey’s would re-release nostalgic bars. Kind of like bringing back Good & Fruity.

The bar looks nice, it’s great to get a fresh candy product. Thought it wasn’t a real chocolate coating, it was glossy and smelled sweet and milky.

Biting into it, I got a feeling that this was familiar. The nougat center is a decent toasted vanilla flavor, the caramel around it didn’t do much for the flavor but adds a great texture and cements the peanuts to the bar. The nuts were well roasted and of the three bars I’ve eaten, only one had a bad nut. The mockolate coating is rather smooth, certainly less grainy that Hershey’s Milk Chocolate is these days and at least let the stars of the bar, the nougat and nuts come through.

After seeing them on Frances’ blog post though, I was pretty convinced that these were not really the Rally Bar, but just repackaged Oh Henry! bars as sold in Canada.

On the left is the Canadian Oh Henry and on the right is the Rally Bar.

They look rather similar. Each weighs 2.2 ounces (larger than most American bars). And Hershey’s no longer makes any of its candy in Canada, leading me to believe that they’re now made in the United States and exported. (Perhaps some Canadians could confirm this.) And they’re both mockolate.

The only appeal I see in this bar is the nostalgic value, whether you’re Canadian or American and remember it from the 70s. There are plenty of other bars that are remarkably similar and could probably serve the same role. Snickers, Chocolatey Avalanche Payday, Oh Henry (USA) and of course Baby Ruth. But I’ll finish the ones I picked up. No use letting them get stale.

Related Candies

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2. Head to Head: Twisted vs Take 5
3. Payday Avalanches
4. Chocolate Payday
5. Pearson’s Buns

I’ve been searching high and low for the Hershey’s Caramel Apple Kisses and finally found them in the Hershey’s homeland, Hershey’s Chocolate World in Pennsylvania.

The Kisses join the large array of Limited Edition Kisses. The Fall themed ones this year are the return of the Candy Corn Kisses and the new Pumpkin Spice Kisses. These are the only milk chocolate Kisses in the bunch.

Caramel apples are kind of fun, and a rather simple idea. An apple, on a stick, dipped into caramel. This candy is like dipping an apple into caramel and then dipping that into chocolate. (Well, it’s actually more like flavoring some caramel with apple and injecting that into a Kiss shaped chocolate mold. The wholesomeness of the actual apple is completely missing here.)

As usual, Hershey’s has created an appealing package. The foils are swirls of orange and red with flags that say Caramel Apple on them.

Since I picked these up right at the factory, they were fresh and stored well. Each Kiss was glossy and firm, nicely molded.

They smell mostly of chocolate. The caramel innards are soft and flowing, more like a sauce than a chewy caramel. It’s smooth and has an apple peel flavor to it along with the caramel flavor. The authentic caramel notes of burnt sugar are absolutely missing as is the butter flavor.

It’s pleasant though, but throat-searingly sweet after two or three. I can say that I appreciate them, and it’s a nice flavor combo without tasting overly artificial but lacks any of the experience of a true Caramel Apple.

Not the nicest looking list of ingredients, the chocolate wasn’t stellar and the combination of flavors was still way too sweet. I give them a 5 out of 10. (Kosher)

The second caramel apple themed item I stumbled on last week are the Goetze’s Apple Caramel Creams.

Bullseyes are a bit harder to find on the West Coast, but I ran across lots in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

As is often the case with Goetze’s, this is a repack of the individually wrapped product under the Giant Eagle “Candy Place” label. But they were also only a dollar, so I can’t complain about the house branding.

They’re rather odd looking, but only because I’m used to the mellow caramel color and the shocking white center.

Here it’s the same caramel donut shape with a filling of intense red. For some reason these are a little greasier on the surface than other Bullseyes that I get, but they were also soft, so maybe that’s a side effect of freshness.

They smell more like Green Apple Jolly Ranchers than caramel and sugar.

I didn’t know what to expect, so I what I got was a shock. The cream center is tart. It’s like a cream paste of apple SweeTarts. It’s soft and tangy and does have a nice artificial apple flavor. In a way this is more “authentic” to the experience of combining an actual apple with caramel. Apples are tangy. But here it’s a very tangy apple, soft and cool on the tongue.

I’ve eaten quite a few of them now and I’m still debating whether I enjoy them or not. The stick-to-your-ribs, cookie-dough-like caramel is satisfying and filling, but the chemical aftertaste of the apple cream center is very odd and it just makes me want a regular Bullseye (and the bitter aftertaste from the Red 40 coloring is never pleasant for me, but your mileage may vary).

I give them a 5 out of 10 as well. This may be my overall feeling about real caramel apples as well.

Related Candies

1. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
2. Caramel Apple Sugar Babies
3. Limited Edition Hot Cocoa Kisses
4. Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses
5. Goetze’s Caramel Creams
6. Head to Head: Rolo vs Caramel Kisses
7. Cow Tails

A few keen eyed readers and Candy Forums friends spotted the new Reese’s Bar. (I’m not sure what this is actually called. The wrapper says: Milk Chocolate Reese’s filled with Reese’s Peanut Butter. But that sounds infinitely silly and doesn’t even include that it’s a bar and not a cup.)

I’ve only seen it so far in a 4.5 ounce size and only at Walgreen’s. But it was on sale for $1.00 and has disappeared in the weeks since I purchased it.

It was easy to spot what with the Reese’s orange wrapper.

The ingredients list is incredibly long:

Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, corn syrup solids, soy lecithin, TBHQ), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, cocoa butter, chcoolate, nonfat milk, milk fat & contains 2% or less of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (plam kernel and palm oil), salt, wheat flour, cornstarch, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, palm kernel, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), whey, TBHQ, soy lecithin, leavening (sodium bicarbonate & sodium aluminium phosphate), vanillin.

The bar is attractive and thick. Each lightly rounded section holds a portion of crumbly yet smooth Reese’s Peanut Butter filling.

What’s clearly evident about this bar is that it’s all about chocolate and less about the peanut butter than the traditional cups.

I usually prefer the high ratio of peanut butter such as the Reese’s Eggs around Easter, but for those looking for the opposite end of the spectrum, this is an interesting flip.

The difference in ratios aside, this bar is far harder to eat and share though certainly a good value.

What confused me most about this bar was that Hershey’s already has a peanut butter filled bar. I’ve even reviewed it.

It looks pretty much the same - 4.5 ounces and the same number of sections. Really the only difference in looking at them is that this bar says Hershey’s on top of each section instead of Reese’s.

But it is different. The center here is smoother and a bit stickier and perhaps even saltier.

The ingredients list is shorter by about a third:

Milk chocolate (sugar, milk, chocolate, cocoa butter, mikl fat, soy lecithin, PGPR, vanillin), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel and palm oil), cocoa butter and contains 2% or less of salt, cornstarch & TBHQ.

I questioned the purpose of this bar the first time I tried it and why it was under the Hershey’s label and not Reese’s. I don’t know if both bars will continue to co-exist but if they have a limited number of slots I’d recommend dumping them both and concentrating on the quality of their core products. It’s not that it’s bad, but it’s just superfluous.

Some Reese’s products are gluten free, but this one lists wheat in the ingredients.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Miniatures
2. Hershey’s Heart’s Desire
3. Reese’s Pieces
4. Reese’s Whipps
5. The Great Pumpkin Roundup
6. Trader Joe’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups
7. Reese’s Bars